Disability Memoir

If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too? Bryan chose to dive. Moments later, as he lay on the beach, unable to move his arms or legs, two questions ran through his mind: Would he walk again? And would he ever have kids? Based on the incredible true story of life, love, and never giving up.

After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a power wheelchair - but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor.

Full of heart and tenderness, The House with All the Lights On provides an account of deafness in Australia and the UK, where Jessica's grandparents spent the first 60 years of their lives. She tells her grandparents' experience of growing up in a hearing world—one where sign language was banned for much of the 20th Century. Her quest to better understand them takes her to sign language classes, to the workplaces of research audiologists, and in the final chapters, she is led back to England where she visit their old schools and family landmarks.

The power of communication is essential; some say a necessity. We all do it, humans, insects, birds, cats, dogs, etc. No matter which species we belong to, we all communicate. Unfortunately, some people struggle to do so. Damian was one of them. Developmental Language Disorder, a speech and language disability, which Damian has had from birth, causes sentences to come out muddled and slow, even though all Damian's ideas are there. Here Damian talks about how DLD has affected his life, and how the charity Afasic has been there to support him throughout.

A profoundly beautiful memoir about disability, difference, and living as a vulnerable body. Jan Grue had just become a father when he inherited a stack of his childhood medical records. Following a diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three, the raft of doctors' notes, clinical descriptions and case histories defined his body as defective and his future as bleak and limited. They conjured a childhood nothing like the one he remembered, that failed to anticipate the life he lived now. "I Live a Life Like Yours" is Grue's beautiful, groundbreaking search for a literary language that could better tell his story.

In 2021, Gabrielle Drolet developed a condition that made her unable to use her hands. It only worsened over time, and as a writer and artist, she had to learn new ways of creating and expressing herself. The experience completely changed her life and her outlook. Look Ma, No Hands explores both the difficulty and the humour of developing chronic and life-altering pain in her twenties. Each chapter looks at a different aspect of her life touched by her disability: how she learned to write when she couldn’t type; how she learned to manage the most mundane daily tasks.

In Parkinson's & Recreation 2, Dennis shares ways in which he and his wife are traversing the progression of PD and is first and foremost a written legacy he is attempting to leave for his family. As a part of this attempt, Dennis has gone on a journey of uncovering his family roots. What would you feel if you discovered Viking kings in your lineage? What would you feel if you uncovered the mystery of how the Jernigan line was woven throughout the fabric of English nobility? What would such revelations mean for you and your family?

In 1991, at the height of the Somali civil war, 12-year-old Abdi Warsame ran for his life through the streets of Mogadishu. In a flash, his legs were paralyzed and his cousin killed. With his country literally falling apart around him, Abdi had little hope for recovery. But, with his faith, his family, and his indomitable spirit, Abdi pursued every available route for a better life.

Condamné par la maladie, Olivier Goy partage avec la journaliste Anne Fulda son inlassable combat pour mieux faire accepter le handicap et lever des fonds pour la recherche, et, surtout, appelle à regarder et aimer la vie pleinement?! Olivier a 46 ans quand on lui diagnostique la maladie de Charcot en 2020. Une maladie neurodégénérative qui se traduit par une paralysie progressive des muscles, mais laisse au malade ses pleines capacités intellectuelles. Espérance de vie?: 3 à 5 ans.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

When fourth grader Alex Schwartz first met his cello, his eyes lit up with wonder, and a smile appeared on his face as bright as the potential his new cello teacher saw within him. The cello positively impacted all aspects of his development, including focus, fine motor, and gross motor skills.

Follow the journey of Tanita Allen, a courageous Black woman confronting the challenges of Huntington's Disease. We Exist documents her harrowing two-year struggle for a diagnosis while living in a toxic NYC apartment that triggered the early onset of her condition. Learn how she wages an impossible, decade-long legal battle against those responsible, unveiling the staggering barriers faced by marginalized communities in both medical and legal systems.

What do you do when your reality slips away? If you're Sky Yardley and Jane Dwinell, you accept each new challenge, reshape your life, and write. When Sky was diagnosed with "probable early stage Alzheimer's" at age 66, he was determined to live as fully as possible. He researched dementia, talked about dementia, connected with other people with the disease, and wrote about it.

As a 14-year-old psych ward patient, Harry realized he had a choice: let anorexia keep ruining his life or fight back against everything his mind told him was true. Now 22 years old, Harry delicately pieces together how his mind derailed to that point, what’s happened since he made his choice, and most importantly, what it’s taught him about life and how best to live it.

See? is an inspirational autobiography that describes how God's grace and the firm, loving support from family, friends, neighbors, an exceptional teacher, and caring supervisors guided the author through life's challenges. It also debunks common myths of blindness and discusses adaptive equipment used by the author on her journey.

During an ordinary Fall afternoon, Kimber Hanchey-Ogden was delivered devastating news: Seth, her 17-year-old son, had been hit by a car and airlifted to a hospital! Having sustained a traumatic brain injury, doctors told her that if Seth made it, he would never be able to walk or talk; he would not remember his past or understand humor. And that was just for starters.

In the face of a mysterious and terrifying illness, this is the story of a family trying to maintain some kind of togetherness. Torn between his commitment to keep Clarisa a part of Janir’s life and the threat she poses to that life, John acknowledges that he can care for his son in ways he never could for Clarisa. All who have experienced the wrench of mental illness in the family will recognize their own journey in this heartfelt story of fatherhood.

Born with a rare, incurable genetic disorder that doctors misdiagnosed until her 30s, Amy’s right leg swelled until it was 200 percent bigger than her left leg. Her peers bullied her for having an “elephant leg,” and she learned to hide her disability by wearing skirts. In an attempt to recreate her identity as a teenager, she competed in the Miss Junior American Coed Pageant, and—to her shock—she won, only to become known as “the beauty queen with the big leg”.

Imagine a simple thing like a round stone underfoot or an unnoticed overhead danger, and how quickly life can take a dramatic turn. For Iain MacLeod, it was a slippery mattress cover. Iain MacLeod's memoir draws us into the experience of those who live with a physical disability, and it speaks to the challenges they must overcome on a daily basis. “Billions of people get out of bed every day without any problem, but when I got out of bed that day, it went horribly wrong,” says MacLeod, a Scotsman with Cerebral Palsy.

Tara Sidhoo Fraser is thirty-one years old when a rare mutation in her brain causes a stroke. Awakening after surgery with no memory of her previous life, she attempts to piece it all back together through a haze of amnesia. Yet, as memories do begin to surface, they are seen through someone else's eyes—the person whose body she stole, whom she calls Ghost.